


late to the party (i hope we offend somebody) - the soft remix

by softlightwood



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: AFTG Remix 2019, M/M, andrew has tattoos but is also Soft, matt is an idiot but we love him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-04 02:16:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21189908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlightwood/pseuds/softlightwood
Summary: Matt leaps up from the sofa, folding Neil into a bone-crushing hug and smacking a kiss to his forehead, almost definitely leaving cocktail-residue behind. “Buddy! You came! I cannot wait to meet your…”He trails off, mouth falling open in a soft ‘O’. Andrew, who is still attached to Neil by the hand, lifts his free arm in a mock-salute. “Boyd”“Huh,” says Matt. “I -huh”“What?” asks Dan, drawing herself away from her conversation with Kevin. Then, “Andrew isAndrew?!”It seems like a movie cliché, but the room falls ominously silent. Neil’s mouth quirks up in a little smile. “AndrewisAndrew, yes”“Except for Sundays,” Andrew adds, voice a low deadpan.





	late to the party (i hope we offend somebody) - the soft remix

**Author's Note:**

  * For [priorwalter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/priorwalter/gifts).
  * Inspired by [late to the party (i hope we offend somebody)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19731931) by [priorwalter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/priorwalter/pseuds/priorwalter). 

> this is my remix for the wonderful priorwalter!! i had a lot of fun reading all of their fics and then agonising over which one to pick, so i hope i did this one justice!!
> 
> shoutout to gluupor and leahlisabeth for running this event!!

“Alright, that’s it” 

Across from Neil, Matt Boyd folds his arms accusingly. The two of them are sitting in a worn leather booth, sticky vinyl table between them, and Matt is frowning with _vehemence_. Neil had been sipping rather innocuously at a strawberry milkshake, feet swinging, and Matt had been in the middle of a convoluted story about a weird customer he’d dealt with the night before. 

“What?” asks Neil. Matt raises an eyebrow and, sensing this is a serious conversation, Neil locks his phone and slips it into the pocket of his jeans. “What’s up?”

“I don’t know!” Matt throws his arms up, very nearly toppling his own drink. “You’ve been…._texting_!”

This time, Neil frowns. “I…have been known to text?”

Matt huffs. He lifts his hands, checking off names on his fingers as he speaks; “you text me, you text Dan – who is working right now, and isn’t even replying to _my_ texts – and you text Kevin, for some reason”

“I text Andrew,” Neil adds to his list, and Matt crosses his arms. 

“Y- what? _Who?_”

“Andrew,” Neil repeats, slowly. “You know, Andrew? The guy I’ve been dating for, like, six months now?”

“_What?!_” and Matt does knock his drink, this time, catching the straw with the back of his hand and managing to spray Neil with whipped cream and caramel. “You’re _seeing_ someone?”

Completely lost, now, Neil cocks his head to one side and steeples his fingers beneath his chin. He distinctly remembers telling Matt all about his first date with Andrew; he was nervous, and Matt helped him pick out an outfit. Neil had sat cross-legged on his bed while Matt rifled through his closet, allowing himself to be more open than he ordinarily would as he expressed his worries. Andrew had been particularly straight-forward, in asking Neil out. They’d been friends for a little while, had met through Kevin, and Neil clicked with him in a way he’d never clicked with anyone else. They’d been over at Andrew’s place, Andrew trying and failing to educate Neil in the ways of Mario Kart, when Andrew had asked - “hypothetically, if I asked you out on a date, what would you say?”

And Neil, without even thinking twice, had blurted “_yes_. Hypothetically”

Somehow, they’d arranged an actual date, and Neil fretted about the ramifications of romance upon their friendship, and Matt had spritzed Neil with his good cologne and sent him on his way. 

“Matt,” Neil tries, “you literally helped me pick out an outfit for our first date”

“Oh,” and Matt sits back in his booth, rubbing a hand across his mouth. “I didn’t – you never told me it went further! That you were _dating_ him!”

That, Neil thinks, is quite likely. He _is_, ordinarily, quite a private person. “Oops?”

“Ugh,” Matt pinches the bridge of his nose, “no matter. I know exactly how you can make it up to me”

Before the words are even out, Neil is groaning. 

“Hear me out! So Jeremy – you know Jeremy? From work? – he’s having a party this Saturday.” Neil groans again. “It’s a housewarming thing, because he just moved in with his boyfriend. _Jean_. He’s an asshole, so you’ll love him. Dan and I are going, Kevin will be there. Allison and Renee both got the weekend off especially, and Nicky – you know, from _Dan’s_ work? – is coming, with his cousins, probably. So you can bring your _date_, and I can meet him! Plus, you’ll be like, getting out of the house”

Neil elects not to mention that he’s out of the house right now. “You had me, up until you mentioned Aaron being there” is what he tells him. Matt’s brows furrow comically. 

“How do you know Aaron? Wait, hold on, does that mean you know Andrew?”

“Of course I know Andrew, he’s m-”

“_Okay_, settle a bet with me here. Is he an asshole, or is he just awkward? Dan and Renee say awkward, Allison and I say asshole. Thoughts?”

Despite himself, Neil huffs out a short laugh. “Wow, yeah, he’s an asshole for _sure_”

“_Right_? Ha, I hope _your_ Andrew isn’t like that”

“Oh, _my_ Andrew?” Neil asks, taking a long sip of his milkshake. “He’s a real _sweetheart_”

When Neil lets himself into Andrew’s apartment a couple of hours later, he kicks off his sneakers and announces, “my friends are fucking stupid.”

From the sofa, beneath a knitted blanket and a plump cat, Andrew asks, “are you just realising that now?”

Neil turns with every intention of snarking him into next week, but his eyes catch on the dust motes floating golden between the tufts of Andrew’s hair and he just - _stares_. Andrew is pretty, if he likes you enough to let you see it. A sleeve of tattoos curl up his left arm and spread out across the planes of his chest, making a home across the breadth of his shoulders. His fingers, working back-and-forth across the expanse of King Fluffkins’ fur, are adorned with little flowers and vines that Neil has memorised like constellations. His hair falls loose across his forehead, soft and golden and just wavy _enough_, and his eyes are like whisky on the rocks. 

They’re peering at Neil, now. Curious, assessing. A little snarky. Flushed pink, Neil throws himself onto the sofa beside Andrew and gets a _thump_ of King’s tail across his arm in protest. “Staring,” Andrew points out. 

“Stop being pretty, then”

It’s Andrew’s turn to flush, now, though only if you know where to look. The tips of his ears are borderline-crimson and Neil knows, beneath the snug fabric of his dark t-shirt, Andrew’s chest will be tinged pink, too. “Shut up. Why are your friends stupid?”

It’s a deflection, but Neil lets him have it. Not before swooping in, stupidly soft around the eyes, to press a chaste kiss to the corner of Andrew’s mouth. “Oh, well. Matt didn’t know I even had a boyfriend, for a start, and they think _my_ Andrew is a completely different person to _the asshole related to Aaron and Nicky._”

“_Your_ Andrew, hm?”

Neil wiggles a little, embarrassed, and Andrew threads their fingers together in silent reassurance. “Did you tell them?”

“Oh, no” and Neil can feel the grin taking shape at the corners of his mouth, “where’s the fun in that? They want me to bring _my_ Andrew to Jeremy’s party this Saturday”

Andrew hums in thought, but Neil knows he’s got him. If there’s one thing Andrew loves, its fucking with people. 

He loves Neil, too.

Saturday rolls around faster than Neil would have liked; as amused as he is that his friends think _Andrew_ is a totally different person to _Andrew_, Neil really does dislike parties. Something about being forced to socialise, and drink weird cocktails and eat stale Dorito chips is a little off-putting, to say the least. Neil loves his friends, though, and he privately can’t wait to have them all change their opinion on Andrew once the night is done.

They pull up in Andrew’s flashy car – Neil prefers his bicycle, but Andrew refuses to ride double, for _some_ reason– and let it idle at the curb, both of them peering out at the house. 

Unsurprisingly, they’re late, but Neil is adamant that it isn’t his fault this time. He’d been waiting on the stoop when Andrew pulled up outside his apartment, immediately parking his car and herding Neil back into the house for some clothing recon. Apparently, it’s bad etiquette to wear sweatpants and a t-shirt to a housewarming party. Now, Neil is wearing slim-cut jeans with a pair of heavy green boots, one of Andrew’s own t-shirts finishing the look off. It’s a little too loose, being that Andrew has considerably broader shoulders than Neil ever will, but it’s soft and smells like Andrew, so Neil thinks its perfect. 

Andrew himself is wearing the same boots in all-black, the only splash of colour being the white t-shirt tucked beneath his leather jacket. The tips of the collar brush the small silver hoops lining the lower-half of his ears and he holds out a hand to Neil, once they reach the front door of Jeremy and Jean’s house. “Ready?”

“To watch your friends criticise me in real-time?” Andrew asks, deadpan. “Definitely”

Neil chews his lip. “You know I don’t care what they think, right? Matt is my best friend but if he hates you, that’s on him. I, uh…love you, and stuff”

“And stuff,” Andrew agrees, reaching up to rap his knuckles against the front door. “I know, idiot. Me too”

Jeremy had seemed completely undeterred at their joint arrival, clapping them both on the shoulder before darting off to take some nachos out of the oven. Neil had raised an eyebrow at Andrew, who shrugged and muttered “he’s not…the worst person” which, coming from Andrew, was high praise indeed. 

Voices trickle down the hallway like a lazy, winding river and Neil is still surprised at the warmth he feels from seeing his friends, safe and happy and all in one place. Renee and Allison are perched on the windowsill, sipping identical glasses of orange juice while talking animatedly to who Neil presumes to be Jean Moreau. The sofa has been taken over by Matt, who has Dan tucked into his side, and Kevin is folded into a neat criss-cross position at the far end. Nicky Hemmick is sitting cross-legged on the floor by Kevin’s shins, facing Aaron, who looks surprisingly relaxed for the first time in his life. Neil wonders, idly, if he’s drunk. 

“Neil!”

Matt leaps up from the sofa, folding Neil into a bone-crushing hug and smacking a kiss to his forehead, almost definitely leaving cocktail-residue behind. “Buddy! You came! I cannot wait to meet your…”

He trails off, mouth falling open in a soft ‘O’. Andrew, who is still attached to Neil by the hand, lifts his free arm in a mock-salute. “Boyd”

“Huh,” says Matt. “I - _huh_”

“What?” asks Dan, drawing herself away from her conversation with Kevin. Then, “Andrew is _Andrew_?!”

It seems like a movie cliché, but the room falls ominously silent. Neil’s mouth quirks up in a little smile. “Andrew _is_ Andrew, yes”

“Except for Sundays,” Andrew adds, voice a low deadpan. There’s a pause, everyone waiting for the punchline, but Andrew has already checked out. Matt and Dan exchange a _look_, and Neil runs his thumb along the back of Andrew’s hand, right where he knows a little lavender-sprig is inked. 

“Hello, Andrew. Lovely to see you,” says Renee, from her perch on the windowsill. Neil peers up at her, pleasantly surprised to see her smiling softly in Andrew’s direction. He had known they were friends, but seeing it feels a little different to thinking about it in the abstract. 

“Renee,” Andrew hums, quirking a brow at her. 

“Ugh,” says a voice from the floor. Neil peers down, meeting Aaron’s eye. “Can we stop marvelling over the wonder that is my brother dating Neil fucking Josten, and can someone pass me the chips, already?”

“You _knew_?” Dan asks, swinging out a leg to kick at his shoulder. “What the fuck, man?”

“Did you forget that I live with Andrew?” Aaron asks, throwing up a hand. “I have to see that idiot every single day of my life, bothering the cat and mooning over Andrew while I’m trying to study”

“I don’t _moon_” Neil protests, affronted when Andrew snickers quietly. “I _don’t_”

Matt opens his mouth on another question, but Jeremy saves the day by bustling in with a tray of food and a cheery smile, sufficiently distracting the room of hungry young adults enough that they forget to interrogate Andrew and Neil. Surpassing the culinary delights of the nacho tray, Andrew sinks down into the only available armchair and raises a brow when Neil makes a noise of affront. 

“Oh, I can grab you a chair from the kitchen, Neil” Jeremy offers, but Neil settles himself on the arm of the chair, instead, legs draped across Andrew’s knees.

“Touché” Andrew murmurs. 

“Is this okay?” 

Andrew hums. Then, he tugs on Neil’s ankle, pulling him gently enough that he slips into Andrew’s lap, back pressed to the arm of the chair, side nudged up against Andrew’s chest.  
“Good?”

“Good”

“_God_,” Kevin huffs, “I hate when you two get cutesy”

Beside him, Matt chokes on his fruity cocktail. Dan slaps his back sportingly, and Neil hides his grin in the collar of Andrew’s jacket. 

Somewhere along the line, Neil manages to fall asleep. 

In his defence, Andrew runs permanently hot, and his fingers are tracing careful patterns into the skin of Neil’s hip, and Neil has his hands tucked warm into Andrew’s jacket. Neil had never considered himself an affectionate person, before he met Matt and Dan. He’d lived with them for a good few years in college, before he’d gotten his own place across the city, and it surprised him how easily he fell into a routine of friendly hugs and platonic touches. Spending nights curled up on the sofa, his legs thrown over Matt’s lap, Dan twisting patterns into his hair as they watched an old shitty movie. Dan throwing herself into Neil’s lap after a particularly harrowing day at work; Matt grabbing Neil and bodily lifting him into a hug whenever he felt the need. 

Andrew wasn’t overly affectionate, when they were just friends, and Neil hadn’t minded so much. As soon as they started dating for real, it occurred to Neil that he was gone enough for him that he wanted to hold his hand at all hours of the day. He learned fairly quickly that Andrew wasn’t opposed to affection, just unused to it, and so together they’d set careful boundaries and moved them around as they grew with one another, becoming comfortable enough for soft, casual displays of affection just like this.

Someone laughs, loud and brash, and Neil hums against Andrew’s shoulder. “Have you decided to join us?”

“Mmmmnh”

Andrew lets out an amused puff of breath. “I want to go outside for a cigarette, should I carry you with me?”

“Nnnngh. You’re too short,” Neil tells him, waking enough to hop off Andrew’s lap before he takes that as a personal challenge.  
They make it as far as the front door before Matt appears, looking apprehensive and a little drunk, twiddling a plastic drinking straw between his fingers. “Neil? Can I borrow you a second, buddy?”

Neil shares a look with Andrew, who waves him off. It isn’t like Neil would have actually _smoked_ his cigarette, he supposes, and so he nudges the front door closed behind Andrew and moves to lean up against the wall beside Matt. “What’s up?”

“I guess I wanted to apologise,” Matt tells him, earnest in a way only matt Boyd knows how to be. “I might have judged Andrew a little too harshly, and it can’t have been easy to hear us calling him an asshole while you were dating him”

“He _is_ an asshole,” Dan says, tucking herself into Matt’s side. Neil’s mouth quirks.

“Yeah, he really is”

“But he’s your asshole, right?”

“Something like that”

“We’re glad you’ve found someone,” Matt says, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. “Your life revolved around work and grocery shopping”

Neil resents that, he thinks, but he also doesn’t have a strong enough rebuke, so he lets it slide. Instead, he picks up on Matt’s tone. “I sense a _but_”

“_But_,” Dan supplies, “why _Andrew_?”

“What she means,” Matt says, faltering almost immediately, “is that….well. You don’t, uh? Talk about him? Ever. We don’t see you together, and all we know of him is that he’s supposedly an asshole. And he looks…”

“Like he kicks puppies for fun,” Dan finishes. 

They mean well. Neil knows, somewhere, logically, that they mean well. But this is _Andrew_, and Neil loves him. This is _Andrew_, and Neil feels the fury of it all right down to his fingertips. 

“I love you guys,” Neil tells them. “You’re my best friends, but _fuck_ you. I don’t talk about him because I’m a private person, and so is Andrew. We’re together _all_ of the time, just at his place, because we usually have it to ourselves and it’s quieter. I – look. I _know_ him. _I love him_. So he has tattoos, and smokes cigarettes, and isn’t as chatty as Jeremy. So what? He’s also the man who talks to his cat in stupid baby voices that he thinks I can’t hear, and the man who knitted a throw-blanket because he was bored and wanted a new hobby. This is the man who calms me down from panic attacks better than anyone I’ve ever known, who likes _god awful_ reality TV and takes spiders _outside_ instead of killing them because he feels bad. You know, to a lot of people, I look like an asshole. And I _am_ an asshole, but you love me, because you _know_ me. So trust that I know Andrew, and I love him, and if you stop judging him by his appearance and the opinions of other people, you could get to know him, too” 

They’re gaping at him, just a little. Matt looks at him with big, teary eyes and says, “you’re right, Neil”

“I know I’m right”

“Shut up,” Dan tells him, around a laugh. “We’re being the assholes, here. We’re just protective of you, but we went about it the wrong way. I’d love to get to know the man you _love_” and Neil flushes, just a little. 

“Me too,” says Andrew. Neil jumps, turning to find him leaning up against the front door, flicking his lighter back and forth. “I didn’t realise I had competition”

Almost instinctively, Neil tucks himself into Andrew’s side. Andrew is a little shorter, but they always make it work. “Shut up,” he mumbles. “You know it’s only you”

“Unfortunately,” Andrew deadpans, but the kiss he presses to Neil’s temple says otherwise. “So. Do your parents approve, or do I have to sneak in through your window every night?”

Neil snorts. Matt, grinning tentatively, folds his arms across his chest. “We approve, on the condition that you take care of our son”

“I hate this, actually” Neil decides. “Can we go back to the part where you didn’t like him?”

“Nope” says Dan, smiling like she’s just now considered the arsenal of embarrassing Neil stories she can bestow upon Andrew.

“Really, though,” Matt says, eyes big and round and serious. “We are sorry, Andrew. You’re…good, for each other. I’m glad he has you”

Andrew shifts uncomfortably at Neil’s side. “Yes, well. I’m stuck with him now, I suppose”

Dan’s eyes drift to the spot where Andrew’s hand curves around Neil’s waist, thumb rubbing little circles into the skin there. “Yeah,” she agrees. “I guess you are”


End file.
